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gwunspoken
We know that now more than ever, there is a growing disconnection between parents and their teens, corporates and their employees, and human interactions in general.
This can cause stress, frustration and many arguments within families and the work environment.
gwunspoken looks at the challenges people of all ages have in their relationships with one another and provides experience and advice, allowing all parties to have a voice.... and feel heard.
Join us to hear corporates, parents, educators, teens and the latest advice of how we can in fact live the life we love, in making authentic interactions, because we know... authentic connection is everything.
gwunspoken
Unpacking Sleep Debt: Strategies for Reclaiming Your Health and Energy
Ever wondered why your chronic fatigue just won’t vanish, no matter how much you sleep in on weekends? On gwunspoken, we reveal the unnerving truth about sleep debt—a silent epidemic that’s quietly wreaking havoc on our minds and bodies. Picture your body as a bank account with no overdraft protection; every hour of missed sleep is a loan you can’t repay easily. Our latest episode unpacks this concept, blending personal tales and groundbreaking research to highlight how sleep deprivation can lead to burnout, anxiety, and even severe health problems such as heart disease and dementia.
But don’t despair just yet. We also equip you with practical strategies to reclaim your sleep and, by extension, your health. Discover the nuanced benefits of power naps, the hidden consequences of weekend oversleeping, and the importance of consistent sleep schedules. We share actionable insights on setting boundaries and making small, incremental changes that lead to significant improvements in mood and productivity. Tune in to learn how to tackle your sleep debt gradually, ensuring you’re not just awake, but truly alive and engaged with the world around you.
www.in8code.com
Welcome to another edition of GW Unspoken, where we discuss stuff we don't typically talk about but probably should when we're here with episode 2, season eight. We're talking about sleep and sleep debt, the only loan you cannot pay off. You know, imagine your body as a bank account. Every hour of sleep you skip is like taking out a loan. So what's the problem? This is the one loan that does not forgive and it does not forget. You know, I have a friend who worked crazy hours in corporate, always bragging about how he only had to have four hours sleep to function. He wore this sleep deprivation like a badge of honor. Fast forward three years. He's dealing with burnout, brain fog. He's obese. He had developed a pretty serious caffeine addiction just to function. It turns out that his body, like anyone else's, does not offer overdraft protection.
Speaker 1:Studies have now shown that you cannot make up for lost sleep by sleeping on weekends and, regardless of what people think it cannot, I've got teens nearly every Monday coming in saying what they're grateful for and they say, oh, I got to sleep in catch-up on the weekend. It doesn't work that way. Chronic sleep debt builds up, impairing your cognitive function, immune response and emotional stability can be all out of whack. In fact, just missing 90 minutes of sleep for a few nights can actually lead to a 32% decrease in alertness. How does that go for you people out there who are driving cars, riding motorbikes, scooters, skateboards? Neurosciences have now found that chronic sleep deprivation alters the brain ability to regulate mood. It leads to increasing anxiety and irritability. That's me. If I don't get enough sleep for three or four days, especially in a row, I am so impatient and that's not fair for the people around me. How do you go with that? Sleep debt increases your risk of heart disease in our saying, stroke and dementia. So what's the solution? Here's a few for you.
Speaker 1:Number one power naps can help. If used correctly, you can oversleep. 30 or 40 minutes is probably too much. The sleep inertia makes you feel more sluggish when you wake up. But if you can get a 20-minute power nap in the afternoon, it can improve your cognitive function and alertness without making you feel groggy. I don't know how many people can do that, but short, sharp naps can actually help. You know, strategic napping historical alertness is awesome, but it obviously does not replace a full night's rest.
Speaker 1:How about? Number two avoid weekend oversleeping. You know many people assume that that catch-up of lost sleep can happen over the weekend. If I can, just, you know, just sleep well, but it affects our rhythm of our heart and also it makes your body struggle to adjust back to an early morning Monday or whenever you start Monday, and they call that social jet lag, getting used to sleeping on the weekend and then coming back up Monday. You know. A more effective strategy is to keep your wake-up time within one hour of your weekday schedule. You know, make up for lost sleep, going a bit earlier rather than just sleeping in for one or two days. How about number three?
Speaker 1:How about we be realistic about obligations and time management? Many of us sacrifice sleep due to work deadlines, social commitments or screen time. Finding just small ways to improve sleep hygiene can make a huge difference. Set clear boundaries, for example. Avoid working late into the night instead of no screen zones before bed, even maybe create an evening routine which allows your body to unwind naturally. Research again shows that even a 30-minute improvement in sleep duration can lead to better focus, memory and mood stability. Don't do it for yourself. Do it for people around you who you interact with. Here's another one how about you prioritize sleep recovery over time. Unlike a financial loan, you can't pay back sleep debt all at once.
Speaker 1:Studies have now indicated that it can take up to four nights of consistent, high-quality sleep to recover from one all-nighter. Instead of trying to binge sleep in one weekend or one Saturday morning or Sunday morning, aim to increase your sleep duration gradually by 50 to 30 minutes per night over a week, or even at least those four days. It's like training. They say that if you do gym for three weeks and you have one week off, you're right back to the start. It's called the reversibility principle. This is no different with sleep. You can't just have four or five bad nights sleep and say I'm going to sleep in Saturday and Sunday and I'll make up for it. It doesn't work that way. So try and get to bed 15 or 30 minutes early for those three or four days and see if you can actually recover. It can help restore immune health, rebalance hormone levels and repair that cognitive function which is more sustainable.
Speaker 1:I know I talked about this in Episode 1, but another one is optimizing that sleep environment for better recovery, because quality is just as good or as important as quantity. So to truly recover from a sleep debt, ensure that your sleep environment is quiet and dark and cool. We want our body to get a deep sleep by having a natural drop in our core body temperature and that also helps to add or build that melatonin production. So we talked about blackout curtains. White noise machines can stop if you're in a noisy environment and that further enhances your sleep efficiency and it gets you that deep, restorative sleep that your body needs. So, look, I really hope you're being accountable here to yourself and maybe a loved one or a peer or a child around you. Teen, do this together. It's really important that you start your journals and write these things down. But here's three more calls of action for your journal entry.
Speaker 1:Number one track your sleep for a week. It doesn't take long. Wake up in the morning, write down a number Are you accumulating debt? And then, next to that, write down your patterns of how it's affecting your mood and energy levels. I got five hours sleep today. I felt this and my energy was this Is there a pattern? If you track that and have a look at it, you become more accountable. Number two identify one area of your life where you could make a small change to improve your sleep. What step can you take immediately.
Speaker 1:We are emotional creatures. We've talked about this a while ago on GW. Unspoken, this is stuff we don't talk about but probably should. We are emotional creatures. We buy things. We do things based often on emotion, not logic. We know that we need seven, nine hours sleep. We know that, but often we don't feel like doing that. We get into habits in our brains to go no, I'm more comfortable, I feel better, I get some dopamine if I look at my social media or do my gaming or watch a couple of Netflix series.
Speaker 1:If you're doing those things, I was addicted to Yellowstone there for a while and I know I was getting lack of sleep, less and less sleep. Some of those episodes were over an hour and it was cutting into sleep time and I know I was feeling tired the next day. But the next day I'd go to bed and try and catch up on a series and same routine, same pattern. I knew what was right and what was wrong. What's one small change you can make to improve your sleep that you can take immediately, that you'll actually do and notice again the emotions that you feel, but also maybe the quality of relationships that may improve around you.
Speaker 1:And number three just reflect on a time when a lack of sleep impacted your productivity or decision making. Make a negative one, write down what happened, but then, as a solution, write down how could more sleep have changed that outcome. Because when you make sleep the reason that affirms how you can fix that problem, maybe your emotion, you'll have more buy-in within your brain, your body to actually do that and your heart to do that. I want to thank you for joining into episode two on sleep in season eight. I look forward to your company when we joining into episode two on sleep and season eight and look forward to company when we get into episode three talking about the importance of sleep.